Help with OpenWRT system

As a schoolproject, I need to program a "sort-of" router. The device is a Linux based device wich is running OpenWRT. The problem is, I have no experience with OpenWRT. The OpenWRT has a list of Unix commands to control OpenWRT. But I need to write my own software (this is done in C++). My question is: How do I get my software running on the device? Some sites speak of packages that need to be transferred to OpenWRT. I already found this page: http://wiki.openwrt.org/BuildingPackagesHowTo but I still don't quite understand.

Does someone have experience with creating software to run on OpenWRT and can eplain me the basics of getting my C++ program to work on the device?